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Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF) is a festival for contemporary art taking place in spectacular Lofoten, a cluster of islands located on the North West Coast of Norway, just above the Arctic Circle every second year.

The festival presents works by international artists in a local and site-specific context and seeks to be an open, experimental, and including meeting place for artists, audience, and locals. LIAF acknowledges the complexity of place and seeks to be a discursive, engaged, and social platform for different positions creating dialogue between the local and global.

The festival was first initiated in 1991, as a local art exhibition with a broad range of expressions and with a regional profile. From 1999, the festival was given an international profile changing the name to Lofoten International Art Festival, and since 2009, the festival has been run by The North Norwegian Art Center (NNKS) and the LIAF-Board.

LIAF presents works by international artists in a local and site-specific context and seeks to be an open, experimental and including meeting place for artists, audience and locals. LIAF acknowledges the complexity of place and seeks to be a discursive, engaged and social platform for different positions creating dialogue between the local and global. The prospect of developing and discovering new knowledge and understanding through art is the core of the festival.

LIAF is not connected to a permanent location or space, but is invented anew every time by infiltrating and moving into already existing structures: Everything from a garage, a library, a shed, a bunker, a fish drying rack, a private house, a shop or an old warehouse. New curators also develop the festival every time, with diverse backgrounds, ideas and practices and in different ways bringing the familiar and unfamiliar together. By insisting on this open and experimental approach, we believe LIAF can be a place for exchange and involvement on multitude levels, every time revealing new things about our world and ourselves.

Lofoten International Art Festival LIAF

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In the News

Lofoten International Art Festival August 30–September 29, 2019 The curatorial team are pleased to announce the following participants have been selected for the next edition of LIAF: João Pedro Vale & Nuno Alexandre Ferreira; Futurefarmers (Amy Franceschini and Lode Vranken); Signe Lidén; Trygve Luktvasslimo; Susanne Christensen; Tricia Middleton; and Kateřina Šedá. More names will be…

"We are extremely happy to announce Hilde Methi as curator of LIAF 2019. She has recently completed several interesting projects, their common denominator being thorough research, long-term collaboration with artists, and an orchestration of meetings between art and audiences in innovative ways. We really look forward to collaborating with Hilde Methi and her curatorial team!"…

The initial list of artists participating in this year's edition of the Lofoten International Art Festival has been revealed earlier this week during a press event held in Venice. The artist were invited to the show curated by Heidi Ballet and Milena Hoegsberg and opening on September 1 are: Youmna Chlala Born in Lebanon. Lives…